


Square Breathing

by joycecarolnotes



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, M/M, Panic Attacks, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 20:39:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17474603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joycecarolnotes/pseuds/joycecarolnotes
Summary: Richard helps Jared through his panic attack at the new office space.





	Square Breathing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Neurofancier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neurofancier/gifts).



> For byocryptid, who wanted to read about "the character who usually takes care of others being taken care of." I hope this is okay! Happy sv fic exchange!

It is easier, always, to suffer on his own. Entirely another to do it here in front of Richard, in front of Dinesh and Gilfoyle, in front of his friends and colleagues, whose opinions he values so much.

 _Hide it_ , he thinks, _hide it. Even if it feels like you're dying inside. It will be so much worse if any one of them notices_. And so Richard goes on, extolling the virtues of the new office space on Ruthven Avenue—its "sharp, clean lines," its "good feng shui," its minimalism—blessedly oblivious to Jared as he starts to sweat and shake, the too-white, windowless walls closing around him.

 _Be okay_ , he thinks. _Be okay. The next time Richard looks at you, be okay_.

"My desk here in this corner. Jared, you over here. Right? I emphatically vote that we move on this."

Jared tries to imagine himself coming to work every day in this office. Passing through the gorgeous lobby. Sitting in that corner. Trying not to dwell on the dark thoughts it stirs inside him, on the similarly airless, cadaverous spaces it calls to mind from his past. Places he was sent to be punished.

Frightened as he is, Jared tells himself it's safe to speak up, that he has something of worth to contribute, and that, after all, Richard called him that first night for his advice. Richard's kept him around because of that advice, because of his hard-earned business acumen, because his guidance has been helpful. And there is nothing Jared loves so much as to be of help.

Jared swallows hard. "Richard," he says, gently, "what're you doing?" just as a cruel voice in his head chimes, _how dare you question your captain's authority!_ "It is my firm opinion"— _oh Donald, Donald, where does an upstart like you get off having 'firm opinions'? Don't you know to go along with others keeps you safe?_ —"that if we were to take this space, our new hires wouldn't be coding, they would be having - panic attacks." And then, before he can think better of it, he's confessing to Richard that he is the middle of one, right now.

He wonders if he's dying. It hasn't been this bad in years, not since he was at Hooli. It certainly feels like a heart attack, and he's seen enough friends suffer cardiac arrest to be quite adept at recognizing it. Alone, now, in the office, Jared turns his thoughts to Richard—dear, sweet, wonderful, genius Richard, who only seconds or was it hours or was it minutes ago rushed gallantly from the room, yelping and tripping, to fetch Jared a glass of water—because he wants Richard and only Richard to be his last, his dying, thought.

Jared gasps, chokes. He grips the wall with fingers like talons. There is something in his throat. Surely he is drowning. He looks up at the ceiling, half-expecting it to collapse, as his knees finally buckle and he sinks down to the floor. Jared writhes, feeling absolutely wretched, wracked with guilt at taking up precious time and space and attention, at Richard running off to do a kind thing for him, and then twice more with guilt at wishing Richard hadn't left. _Who are you_ , he thinks, _to demand when it comes to how you're cared for? Beggars can't be choosers, and how you've begged and begged!_

He tries to remember what he's done before, in situations like this one. How he survived that dreadful trip in the trunk of Gavin's Tesla, all those nights locked in his foster family's windowless toolshed. He supposes back then he'd been better at hiding it. Back then he'd been protected, to some extent. The mercy of going unseen.

There is danger, Jared knows, in letting himself need others. It is safer, always, to _be needed_ by them, to make himself indispensable, the way he's worked so hard to with Richard, so that he might not be sent away again.

Jared knows he had advice, once, for getting through a panic attack, advice he heard in his therapist's office, and read in the pages of self-help books. Only now, when he most needs it, that advice feels utterly inaccessible. And oh, how terribly smug he'd been, doling out that advice over the years to others—to Richard most recently, and to Richard most of all! How pathetic, how incompetent, Richard must think him now. Jared wonders, despairingly, if Richard will ever trust him or take his advice again. 

He sweats, shakes, soaking through his nice checked button-down, curled up almost foetal on the floor. A part of him hopes Richard never comes back, and another chastises him for thinking ill of his captain. How awful he feels, how undeserving of kindness—and immediately after he questioned Richard's leadership no less! How he acted, bragging so boldly, so brazenly, so nakedly, about doing "a really good job of hiding it"! 

Jared supposes he deserves Richard's scorn now, for Richard to turn his back on him. He is almost resigned to that fate when Richard comes bursting back into the office.

"Here." Richard holds the door open with his hip, clutching a too-full glass of water. "Jared, uh. Drink."

Jared looks up as Richard approaches, hot and sick with shame, blinking into the bright lights, into Richard's beautiful face. It is important to Jared, always, to appear presentable. Never a hair out of place, not an unpressed pant, never a missed button. It is almost unbearable, to have Richard witness him in this moment. The fraud revealed, beneath his veneer of professionalism. To have Richard see Jared with his hair down, so to speak.

Richard crouches beside him, sets the water on the floor. Jared doesn't know how to react; accepting kindness, after all, is not part of his particular skillset. He is used to being the one doing the caring, the one crouching beside Richard, and standing over Richard, and talking Richard up from the unforgiving floors of innumerable Palo Alto bathrooms. The truth is, Jared _likes_ to do the caring. He likes to be the one who is needed, never the one who needs. In this way, he thinks, he's found his perfect man in Richard Hendricks. Richard, who is William Blake's Little Boy Lost. With each misstep and misspeak and miscalculation, each untied shoe and skipped meal and rumpled collar, Richard practically cries out 'mother me,' 'take care of me,' and Jared is all too delighted to answer, to be the first responder to his captain's distress call. 

He wonders if he's ever seen Richard from this angle before, looking up at him from below. His sharp chin, his statuesque, aquiline nose, his halo of curls like a cherub's. Certainly Richard has never seen Jared so shamefully helpless. 

"Come on, drink," Richard insists, and Jared looks at the glass, sitting there so accusatory. He burns with guilt over how water wasn't really what he wanted. Still, he reaches out for the glass with shaking hands— _if it's what Richard wants_ , he thinks—and almost as soon sets it toppling over, rivulets seeping into tiles' cracks. 

"Oh goodness," Jared gasps. "Richard I'm so sorry."

"It's, ah, no." Richard slides away from the spilled water. "It's nothing. Let's - just. Let's both move away from this."

They move together. Sit, backs against the wall, and Jared feels an outlet jabbing into the small of his. He can't help but feel he deserves the discomfort.

"Just, uh. Forget the water. Breathe," says Richard.

Jared gasps, sputters, releases something like a sob instead. "Richard, I can't. I can't breathe. I'm sorry."

"It's okay." Richard rests a hand on his shoulder. "Here, I'll do it with you. In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. Right?"

They breathe together, Richard sat close enough that Jared can smell his scent, something like cheap dandruff shampoo and pine sap. He likes it, he thinks: how Richard doesn't care about fancy, new, expensive things, even—somehow—he likes Richard's disastrous insistence on being frugal with their offices. Like Jared, he's driven by a desire to do good work, not for all the trappings that come with it. Jared loves him for that.

 _One, two, three, four_. Jared closes his eyes. He breathes in the scent of Richard, and tries to ground himself through his senses, to convince his body it is neither the future nor the past (there it is!, he thinks, the advice he believed he'd forgotten). Jared inhales Richard's scent, pressing his overlarge nose to Richard's hair and smelling his scalp, drinking it in almost greedily. He hears Richard's breath. Feels the places where his feet press to the floor, where his back touches the wall, even the outlet cruelly jabbing into it. Jared lolls his head on Richard's shoulder, and he feels Richard accept it. Richard's warm, dry palm resting softly, hesitantly, against the back of Jared's hand.

"You're - we're - you're okay. You're gonna be okay."

"Oh Richard, I - "

"Shh. Don't. I mean, you don't have to talk. We can just - " and Richard turns Jared's hand over so that his own falls into it, and then they are holding hands.

They don't speak again. They breathe in time, together. Jared thinks of all the times he's been on the other side of this, wading through panic attacks with Richard, and wills himself to accept help the way he always hoped that Richard would: easily, like someone who _deserves_ help, without doubt or shame or fear. He feels his heart rate calm, his airway clear and open.

"Look," Richard says. His free hand plays idly with a loose string dangling from one of his shirt buttons. "Jared, you're like. My best friend. And if you say this space doesn't work, I'll listen. I'll - I won't take it. We can afford something else. You're right. I trust you and, like. I value your opinion."

Jared nods. He dries tears he hadn't known he shed against his shirtsleeve. "How did you know," he asks, "about square breathing?"

"I, uh. I thought, you know. What would Jared do?" Richard smiles shyly. He squeezes Jared's hand, once. Jared lets his eyes close, and tries so hard to memorize this feeling. The warmth, the comfort, of Richard's hand in his. It feels almost perverse, to enjoy sitting here with Richard, in this room that sends Jared back into the bleakest moments of his past.

It's different, he thinks, now, because he's not alone. And that can be a good thing.

"You ready to go?" asks Richard.

"Yes. I think so."

Richard helps him to his feet. "So... should I do that again if next time?"

Jared tilts his ear toward Richard. He hasn't understood, and anyway what Richard's asking feels so new, so unexpected. "Pardon?"

"It seemed like the water didn't help but maybe the breathing thing did, so. If you have another... attack. Do you want me to do that again?"

"Oh." Jared feels dumb with joy, ecstatic with utter disbelief, at being asked this question. The offer to help, the request for his opinion, the implicit assumption that next time, Richard will still be there. He feels so seen it is quite frightening, but he finds he wants to conquer that fear. "Richard," Jared says, and he grasps his friend's hand. "Stay with me."


End file.
